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I love anvil's stuff, and I just noticed the bionic greatcoat legs... Awesome!

But £3.50 for TWO pairs of legs? We are already paying £1 per pair of legs which is a bit expensive but fine, but £1.75 per dude to give them bionic legs? What gives? Part of the leg looking robot makes it cost nearly TWICE as much?

I was going to do another 20 guardsmen with full anvil bits just to have some bionic legs to mix in, but TWICE the cost of normal legs is ridiculous to me.

ph34r's forgeworld Phobos blogThe Polito form is dead, insect. Are you afraid? What is it you fear? The end of your trivial existence?
When the history of my glory is written, your species shall only be a footnote to my magnificence.

2018/08/10 22:26:02

Subject: Anvil Industry - Limited Edition London Yeoman Inquisitor, available until the end of June!

Anvil has had to pay someone to sculpt the item and then make a more intricate mould to cast that part, which, in all likely hood, isn't going to sell as well and will need to have a higher price in order ensure any shortfall in the lower amount sold.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/10 22:29:45

'Anyone can win, but it takes a good man to lose.'
-Louis Guzman

2018/08/10 23:11:47

Subject: Anvil Industry - Limited Edition London Yeoman Inquisitor, available until the end of June!

All of Anvil's stuff has to be sculpted and it's all about the same complexity and niche nature. I don't feel like your explanation applies a sufficient amount here.

ph34r's forgeworld Phobos blogThe Polito form is dead, insect. Are you afraid? What is it you fear? The end of your trivial existence?
When the history of my glory is written, your species shall only be a footnote to my magnificence.

2018/08/10 23:37:13

Subject: Anvil Industry - Limited Edition London Yeoman Inquisitor, available until the end of June!

All things might indeed need to be sculpted, but it is potentially (I haven't seen the legs, nor are my sculpting skills capable of providing me with any really input on any potential time difference) a more intricate sculpt. More time for the sculptor = more money = higher initial cost that needs to be balanced.

Their items might be niche in nature, but here we are talking about a niche within a niche. Un-mechanised greatcoat legs have a greater potential market than mechanised (I would think).

There is also the possibility that they're aware they are (perhaps?) the only ones that make said mechanised legs, and can profit handsomely until another small resin manufacturer does. So I guess there is that possibility too.

It could be a pricing mistake; a bug in the system; an introductory price...

Any answer from anyone bothered to answer your question is likely to be supposition; you could submit your question to Anvil privately and be much more likely of a definitive answer.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/12 17:55:12

'Anyone can win, but it takes a good man to lose.'
-Louis Guzman

2018/08/12 15:46:08

Subject: Re:Anvil Industry - Limited Edition London Yeoman Inquisitor, available until the end of June!

The question regarding pricing on the greatcoat bionics was put to me privately, but as it was also asked publicly, I feel its appropriate to copy my answer below. I am always happy to be upfront and honest about all aspects of Anvil Industry including our pricing structure.

---------------

Pricing is always tricky, balancing the need to make a profit vs wanting to price fairly.

Part of the price charges goes toward the actual manufacturing process - materials and labour - but the majority goes toward the time required to design the product in the first place, fixed overhead costs, and investment in expanding our range.

As a rule, the more of something we sell, the cheaper we can sell it because the cost of designing it in the first place is spread over more individual sprues.

We sell probably about 10 sprues of regular long greatcoat legs for every set of bionic legs because most people only want a few.

The extra leg bits on the sprue are there to allow conversions with the regular long great legs, so you can get a bit more pose variety. You can probably get 4 bionic leg figures from each sprue with a bit of clipping and modelling.

-------------

Some one raised the point about being the only manufacturer of bionic greatcoat legs on the market (I believe this is the case), and thus being in a position to charge what ever we like.

This is interesting and worth expanding on, if you are interested in the dull economics of running a wargaming business.

I have never thought that the entire purpose of Anvil Industry is to make maximum profit from our operation, but turning a profit is the most important objective (as without profit the company ceases to exist pretty rapidly).

Lets say we want to make maximum profit from our bionic greatcoat legs:

A. We put them up for £80 per sprue. A ridiculous price for a wargaming product and literally no one buys them, the cost of making the product, probably around £150-£300 (It is hard to calculate exactly), is the loss we make.

B. Alternatively, we put them up for £0.50 per sprue, an absolute bargain, and everyone who wants to buy bionic legs orders lots

However, even at £0.50 there is a limit to the number of people who know about our webstore and want bionic greatcoat legs, so there will a maximum number of sprues sold. Say we sell 1000 sprues. We've made revenue of £500, but with the cost of manufacturing, we actually end up making a similar loss to the first example.

C. We charge £3.50 per sprue. We sell 50 sprues since launching the bionics range earlier this year. This is the actual figure I just pulled out of sales data. It's not as high as I would have liked. Revenue of £175 means we have to sell at at least another 50-100 sprues before we break even on product development. We probably will sell that many but it will take some time.

Luckily, we have lots of products, and some of them make us lots of money. The products which make us huge profits allow us to take risks and add products to the range which may or may not sell well.

If we charged £2.50, we would have to have sold around 70 sprues instead of 50 to make the same revenue, and even more to make the same ultimate profit.

If we charge £4.50, we could sell 38 instead of 50 and make the same revenue, but more profit (less work to make 38 sprues). Would we still have sold 50 sets at a higher price?

For each product, there is a perfect price point at which sales volume vs profit per item maximizes overall profit. Figuring out what that price is, is extremely difficult, and there have been many many books written about it!

If you want to purchase some bionic long greatcoat legs, you can do so HERE.

Hmm I personally never had a problem with AI's pricing for the quality they bring onto the table (workbench?), especially when considering that the kit contains 4 bionic greatcoat legs plus 2 regular bionic legs. Seems like a fair deal for £3.5 or almost 4€. Just my 2 cents, though.

Barzam wrote:Didn't you guys have some boiler suited bodies in the works? What happened with them?

They are on the way!

We are a bit understaffed, trying to balance fulfilling the DBR Kickstarter punctually with keeping up some regular releases.

The next release, fairly soon, is Robed cultists.

Boiler suit renegades will follow on after that, then heavy armour traitor infantry.

Hopefully all this stuff will come out before the end of the year, with a retail release of the Daughters in early 2019, but this may be wishful thinking on my part unless we can hire a few more people.

The "Spent Ammo Casings" sprue was spray primed with Krylon Flat Black, then painted with a Base of of Vallejo Model Color - Gold ( 996 ) for the bare brass casings and Mechrite Red for the shotgun shell casings.,

This was allowed to dry before cutting off the sprue with a pair of Hobby Snips and glued down with Gorilla Super Glue, then given a Wash of Devlan Mud after the glue was allowed to dry thoroughly.

The Spent Ammo Casings were Highlighted with Vallejo Gold again while the shotgun shell casings got a Layer of Mephiston Red, making for a trench that saw a lot of action!

Can't link as on phone, but Anvil have put up some Halloween themed stuff. Pumpin heads that scale for Regiments models, loose pumpkins for a pumpkin patch, carved jack o'lanterns and Vampire hunter who also has the option of a pumpkin head.

There's also a new regiments platoon deal, 'First rank , second rank'. Which describes what you get pretty well.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/10/06 23:47:59

Joel's mentioned a few things in the KS updates, they've been casting shed loads of stuff for the KS fulfilment, dealing with staff absence as well as bringing on and training additional staff.

They're still quite active on Facebook, so if you want to see what's going on that's always a good place to check. Last week they went to a UK trade show, prepping for which is another sort of thing that can slow them down.

To say we've been extremely busy these past few months would be a significant understatement..

Trying to keep on top of regular orders and gear up to fulfil a big Kickstarter, whilst also working on some major business development projects (which I'll be excited to talk about early next year) has been extremely taxing.

I've been checking out your C-48 Warden Mech's. I know they aren't in stock and you are quite under the pump to do fulfillment for your KS, but will they be coming back into stock any time soon? I was thinking these would make great alternative Tau Steal Suits. But to do that they would require a weapon like the miniguns from the Ajax Exo-Mechs. If the Wardens come back to being available again, is it possible to get the miniguns as separate parts to add to them to have this design work? Just wondering. Cheers!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/10/13 02:12:28

Yo! Just a suggestion for your Regiments range - we’re currently starting up a Vraks campaign at H.A.T.E and, given that FW have discontinued their Renegade Militia range, it would be amazing if some enterprising miniature company were to make some Gas Hood Heads. It seems that, while loads of companies make gas masks, there isn’t anyone currently making the sort of hood those models were known for.